


A Season in Hell

by MildredMost



Category: 19th Century CE RPF, Symbolist Poets RPF
Genre: Age Difference, Blackmail, Crueltide, Dirty Talk, Drunk Sex, Drunkenness, Face Slapping, Knifeplay, M/M, Poetry, Recreational Drug Use, Violent Sex, Yuleporn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 08:35:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8884048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MildredMost/pseuds/MildredMost
Summary: Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud spend a romantic winter in London together. The screamy, stabby, drunken sort of romantic. “Do it then!” Rimbaud yelled, tearing at his undershirt, baring his chest."Stop it!” Paul screamed back. “Why cannot you understand? Selfish little fucking…I should stab you through the heart, if you had one.”“If  I  had one? What do you have in place of one, you pathetic drunk? An empty gin bottle?” Rimbaud started to laugh.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Deepdarkwaters](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deepdarkwaters/gifts).



_I always fear – it must be remembered, Some atrocious act of yours._

Paul Verlaine - Romances Sans Paroles

 

_Tedium’s no longer my love. Rage, debaucheries, madness, all of whose joys and disasters I know – my whole burden’s laid down. Let us appreciate without dizziness the extent of my innocence._

Arthur Rimbaud - Une Saison en Enfer

The man was following him again.

Government spies, thought Paul, as he turned up his collar against the damp and cold of a London fog, should surely be trained to blend in a little better. Especially if a half-drunk poet could spot them.

He left the doorway of the Hibernian Arms and headed for his lodgings.

It was Rimbaud’s fault, of course. _Of course_. The friends they had made since they ran away together to London were refugees from the Paris commune - militants, revolutionaries, republicans - people who really could not be safely associated with. But he had been careful. Until Rimbaud had insisted on going to that meeting and causing a scene, and drawing all sorts of attention to themselves. And now their names were on some list. Some fucking list the Metropolitan Police had, and they were being watched.

And who knows which of the small French community here in Soho could be trusted. Paul was unsure for instance about Monsieur Barjut the newsagent who had found he and Rimbe their lodgings. Shifty little shit with everyone’s names and addresses in that greasy little notebook of his. No doubt he had taken one look at Rimbaud and passed both their names to the authorities.

And it was all untrue; Paul had claimed to be a Communard for the glory of it. In reality, when the army came to smash the barricade and disperse the rebels, Paul had not been on the streets fighting with his comrades. He had hidden in terror in a cupboard and tried to fuck the maid.

Still, Paul thought a little drunkenly, it was quite intriguing to be followed by a handsome young police officer. The uniforms were so delightful; all those shiny buttons and straps and tight trousers, and the phallic truncheons at the waist. And the discipline and whistles and the "yes sir, no sir". Mon dieu, the thought of that in your bed. Too delicious.

He swung into the newsagent then to pick up a copy of Le Monde. M Barjut greeted him warmly, no doubt noting down his every purchase to pass on to interested parties. He must remember to tell Rimbe to behave in front of him, for all the use that might be. Sometimes when they were drunk they would forget themselves and Rimbaud would look at him in that way and Paul would want to...right there in the street, just... _oh_ , this was no life. No life at all! But he hated to be alone. _What would be worse_ , he wondered; _deportation as a Communard or hard labour as a sodomite_.

He should go back to Mathilde, beg her to forgive him. She was his wife, she was obliged. He imagined her big dark eyes filling with tears as she clasped him back into her arms.

But a flash of Rimbaud’s cruel mouth against his own overcame the vision, and he flushed. The irresistible boy. His mouth, his eyes, his _mind_. What could he see in Paul, ten years older, shabby and balding, he could not fathom. But he wanted him, and he needed him. They were consumed by each other. No, he could not leave him. Stultify himself in Parisian parlours. He would never write again if he went back.

He would forget all this. They would make a life here. Rimbaud would not always be so wild. And until then he could dull the senses and relax the mind with a little English tipple.

He turned abruptly and went to back to M Barjut to buy a bottle of gin instead. Let him put that in his little fucking book, he thought, as he slammed down half a crown.

And then back to their lodgings. They should move to Hampstead or Highgate, Paul thought, where all the writers lived. So much nicer, not like this smoke-stained slum. Rimbe of course loved it.

The street outside was like something etched by Hogarth as usual. People everywhere. Drunks, whores, packs of children; a valiant member of the Temperance Society, pamphleting. God, how did they all endure?

He took a pamphlet because it would amuse Rimbe and stepped inside.

A grubby child Paul recognised as belonging to the landlady was hanging around in the stairwell, rife with lice and mischief.

“You’re going to catch it Mister,” she said, grinning at him and bouncing a ball against the wall in front of him.

Paul ignored her and swept by. The ball hit the back of his neck.

“I said you’re going to catch it,” the girl said again.

“What do you mean?” snapped Paul, rubbing his neck.

“My mother hasn’t seen the mess that boy made yet, but I have. You’re done for, when I tell ‘er.” She mimed a large kick, presumably aimed at an imaginary Rimbaud. “Bang. She’ll kick you both right into the gutter. He flung his clothes out the window again an' all.” She nodded at a filthy pile in the corner. Paul snatched them up and bundled them under his arm.

What in Christ’s name had he done now, thought Paul as he took the stairs two at a time. He had gone out to teach one pupil, and had only stopped in the pub for a couple. Well, a few. Surely the boy hadn’t had time to…

The door was ajar but at least on its hinges. Paul gave it a push.

The room was destroyed. Feathers from the mattress drifted in the draught from the open door where Paul stood, frozen. The chairs had been broken; one half burnt. Incomprehensible words had been painted...in blood?...across one of the walls. Glass was everywhere. Rimbaud himself was unconscious, naked and on his back, his legs streaked in grey mud, his face hopelessly young in sleep.

Paul walked across the room, his boots crunching on the broken shards of half a dozen wine bottles. He crouched and shook him.

Rimbaud opened his eyes, blinking at him.

“Hello,” he said.

Paul stared at him.

“Don’t look at the carpet,” Rimbaud said. “I drew something awful on it.”

“Fuck the carpet; look at this place!” Paul roared.

“Don’t shout,” said Rimbaud in a small voice, covering his face. “It makes you so ugly.”

“What did you do?”

Rimbaud shrugged.

“Oh my friends came for a drink. We had a disagreement…”

“Friends? You mean those vagrants from the canal bank.”

“Stop being so bourgeoisie,” said Rimbaud, a small smile creeping across his face; delighted to have provoked Paul into snobbery. _Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité_ Paul thought wryly. So much for that.

“How are you so filthy?”

Rimbaud shrugged again, rolling over and lighting his hashish pipe. Paul could not help but admire the long line of his back and the white curve of his arse.

Little shit.

“A dust cart overturned by Camden Lock. What a crash! The horse threw it over or…” he took a great suck of the smoke. It curled out of his nose, his mouth. “The dust flew up in the air, you could see it lifting, lifting. Everyone coughing. They threw water on it to tamp it down. You should have seen the patterns it made, the grey rivers through the cobbles. I took off my boots and sank my feet in. It welled up between my toes like the silt used to at…” he lost his train of thought. “And the boat…half sunk...”

“The boat?”

“No. No boat. Oh. My shoes…”

“You have lost them. You walked home like that. Grey to the knees like a mud lark.”

“Don’t look at me that way,” said Rimbaud, his blue eyes stormy.

“What way?”

“Fondly.”

Paul laughed.

“You are drunk Rimbe,” he said in a sing-song voice he knew would enrage him. “Let me put you to bed.”

“You try it and see what becomes of you,” Rimbaud said. “I am not some fucking amusing child to be...You understand nothing, no wonder your poetry is shit.” He sat up. “Why would I care about how I looked in the streets? What does it matter if I degrade myself with filth? The whole purpose is to let go of the self! You cannot write with yourself in the way, so _present_ in everything, as if it were important. It is the _least_ important thing...the very…”

“It is all very well to let go of the self if you have somebody else to earn the fucking money for you,” Paul said, a bitter edge creeping into his voice.

“I told you from the start that I wanted you to keep me,” Rimbaud said, quite calmly, as though this was the most reasonable thing in the world. “How else am I to write?”

Paul slumped into the only remaining chair and fished in his pocket for the gin bottle. God, how had he got himself into this mess?

Of course he knew how. He had done it to himself. Invited the young genius to stay with Mathilde and himself in Paris. He’d planned to dazzle him, show him the big city, teach him about poetry.

So much for that. As if Rimbe would ever let anyone impress him. He remembered the first time he’d laid eyes on him; a grubby boy sat hunched over a bowl of soup at his table.

He had been gobbling it, eyes cast down on the bowl, spoon clattering on the rim. A thatch of not too clean hair.

“Paul, you have returned. Your guest has arrived,” Mathilde had said and the boy raised his eyes at last.

And what eyes. Deeply unsettling and icy blue; wolfish. His ancestors were from the forests of Scandinavia, Rimbaud had told him since, and he could believe it. The eyes lanced through Paul, pinning him like a butterfly.

He had made a strange movement with his hands, knocking one of Mathilde’s many trinkets off the sideboard.

Rimbaud had tilted his head and looked at him without saying anything, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.  He had not taken his eyes from Paul since he had looked up and Paul no longer knew what to do. It was like looking for too long at the sun.

Mathilde’s old dog lolloped over to Rimbaud at that moment, nudging his leg looking for scraps. Rimbaud broke his gaze and looked down.

“Dogs are liberals,” he said, and fed him a bit of bread. Then he had emptied his pipe onto the remains of his dinner and abruptly left the room.

Paul followed him as though hypnotised.

“Monsieur Rimbaud,” he began.

Rimbaud paused on the stairs and looked back.

“Monsieur Verlaine. You are not how I expected,” he said. And smiled.

Paul stepped forward and held onto the newel post with both hands, like a drowning man.

“Come with me tonight,” he said in a low voice. “I’ll take you to the Latin Quarter.”

“No, I’m tired,” Rimbaud said. “We’ll go tomorrow.” But he had lifted a hand and touched Paul’s cheek with the very tips of his fingers, just for one moment. And that had been enough.

And now they were in London after running away together. No wife, no home no child; just poverty and squalor and drunkenness. A truculent boy to feed and clothe. Fights, scenes, every single day. It could not be borne.

He took a long, burning gulp of gin. “You could teach too you know,” he said to Rimbaud, though they had had this fight many times before.  

“I am a poet.”

“What, then, am I?” snarled Paul, standing up and walking away.

“A man who cannot forget he calls himself a poet,” said Rimbaud, stalking towards him, uncaring of his nakedness.

Paul watched him in apprehension mixed with delight. He was pure contradiction, this boy. Big rough hands like a farm labourer; long elegant limbs like an aristocrat. His face so ordinary but his eyes so extraordinary. Big cock; small heart. _No_ heart. He fucked and ate like an animal, but wrote poetry as if he’d been touched by the gods.

He was exquisite.

" _Thy fearful symmetry,"_ Paul murmured. He could not tell if he said it aloud. His head throbbed with the mixture of hashish and gin. The world was beginning to rotate.

Rimbaud smiled wide, viciously delighted. A show of teeth; sharp, white. “ _What dread hand,"_ he said and shoved Paul hard against the remaining chair. Paul sat down abruptly, heart beginning to stutter. Rimbaud stood over him. “ _And what dread feet."_

Paul looked up at him, as Rimbaud straddled him, holding Paul’s wrists against the arm rests. “ _What dread grasp,"_ he said, arching against him. Paul’s mouth dried as he looked at his young body above him; the lean muscles, the pale, flawless skin.

Dipping his head, Rimbaud bit hard on Paul’s neck.

Paul screamed and struggled. “Rimbe,” he gasped, hardening despite himself. God, fuck, how could this arouse him, what sick fucking urge had Rimbe seen in him.

Rimbaud had stopped biting and was sucking at his neck, hips rocking against Paul’s. And Paul was hard, harder than he’d ever been. His cock was trapped, painful in his trousers, and the pain and the friction were too...

“Rimbe, stop...you must stop or I’ll come,” he managed.

“Why the fuck wouldn’t you want to come?” Rimbaud said, and held him down tighter. Paul tried to wrench himself out of Rimbaud’s grasp and Rimbaud laughed and pushed his full weight down onto Paul’s hands. Paul kicked out, wriggling and Rimbaud laughed again and threw himself against Paul, tipping the chair over.

Paul’s head hit the floor and he yelled out, feeling the chair splinter beneath them. He kicked Rimbaud who rolled out of reach and then came back fighting.

“You horrible old prick,” he said. He slapped Paul across the face, open handed. “We were having a good time, you always have to…”

“You bit me, you little shit, you little fucking…”

“I’ll rip your throat out next time,” Rimbaud said. “Maybe I’ll do it now.” He bent his head to Paul’s neck again, but Paul grabbed two handfuls of his hair and yanked his head back.

“Animal,” Paul said. “Why cannot you just love me?”

“This is how I love,” Rimbaud said and grinned. “Like the Tyger.”

He reached for the sword cane but Paul for once was ahead of him. He grabbed it and unsheathed it, then pounced back at Rimbaud, sharp edge to his throat.

“Get off of me, _poet_ ,” Rimbaud spat.

“You will behave?” Paul said, and pressed the sword harder against his throat. A bead of blood welled. Rimbaud swallowed, the cold blue eyes glazing with arousal. _What distant deeps_.

“You disgust me,” he said.

“You _want_ me,” said Paul, leaning heavily against him.

“ _Fuck_ you,” Rimbaud said, struggling. “Fuck…”

But Paul pressed a hand to Rimbaud’s crotch and felt the truth. Rimbaud let out a little gasp and pushed himself harder into Paul’s palm.

Paul could not help but begin to stroke. And Rimbaud was a revelation like this. He gave himself over to it just as he gave himself over to every sensation. Eyes closed, mouth panting, head thrown back. The long throat with the trickle of blood.

“This is what you want?”

Rimbaud was stubbornly silent but his breathing was giving him away. He opened his eyes again. Paul never failed to be pierced by the blue of them.

“ _Oui_ , Paul,” he said, his rough Ardennes accent flooding back with his arousal. “I want it.”

Paul’s cock filled, _hard_ , at the sound of Rimbaud’s voice. Would be like fucking a farm boy. Like fucking a little… _slut_ of a…

He dropped the sword and flung Rimbaud over onto his stomach on the mattress.

“Open yourself,” he said, his voice rough. Rimbaud gasped and reached back, holding himself apart. Paul spat, and worked it in with a finger, feeling the tight ring of muscle clench around him.

“Paul…” Rimbaud moaned, pushing back against him and Paul almost groaned himself. Rimbaud was so rarely like this; offering himself up, wanting him. Paul wondered how much he would take. He reached for the oil, coating his cock in it.

Without waiting he plunged in to the hilt as Rimbaud’s lithe body squirmed and bucked beneath him. Rimbaud let out a long, desperate moan and dropped his head onto his forearms.

“Move…” he gasped. Paul did.

“You got fucked like this on the farm didn’t you,” Paul said, pulling back and banging into him. “You let whoever wanted to...you,” he lost his train of thought as Rimbaud tightened around him. _Mon dieu_ how he stayed so _tight_ …

“Any old soldier I bet,” he continued, fucking into Rimbaud’s body as hard as he could, watching Rimbaud’s firm little arse judder with the impact. “Lecherous old men. Your teacher. You are disgusting…”

“I fucked _them_ ,” gasped Rimbaud. “I fucked them like I fuck you. Till they whined for more, like you do. You might as well have been a virgin till I…Oh, _oh_ , Jesus. _Paul_ …”

“In your Lycee uniform, they bent you over and screwed you, one after the other…did you recite your fucking Latin at them? Your prize-winning translations? The little genius with his trousers round his ankles, begging for... _Oh_.”

“Harder,” Rimbaud gasped. “Oh, harder.”  

The boy was moaning in earnest now, hips rolling into the mattress, a stream of words in rough snatches of dialect he could barely comprehend. All Paul knew was that he was begging. Begging for him.

“God how I want you, I want you, all the time,” Paul whispered into the back of Rimbaud’s neck. “I don’t want anything else. Just this.”

He wrenched Rimbaud’s hips up, pushing himself inside him as hard as he could, and wrapping his hand around Rimbaud’s cock. Rimbaud made a beautiful, strangled sound and tensed up. Christ the boy was so ready, so primed. He never could understand why he would get like this for him, for Paul. Paul gripped him and tugged once, twice.  

“Oh, Paul, oui; oui _S’il te plait_ ,” Rimbaud said pushing forward into Paul’s hand. Paul ground his cock deeper into him.

“Tum capiti inscripsit caelesti haec nomina flamma - _Tu vates eris_ ,” Paul said in Rimbaud’s ear. “You precocious little shit.”

Rimbaud gave a sobbing moan and began to spend. Paul felt him clench and shudder as he came, pinned down against the filthy bed.

He pulled out and flipped Rimbaud over, even as he still spilled over himself. Paul plunged back inside him, leaning down to lick at the blood that welled at his throat. Rimbaud cried out from the sensitivity and Paul forced down an urge to hurt him, to make him cry out, to…

“Finis, you arsehole, you sadistic shit,” Rimbaud said, trying to struggle out from underneath him, his seed pooled on his stomach. Paul grabbed his wrists and trapped them above his head with one hand.

Rimbaud’s eyes blazed at him.

“You can’t finish old man? You need some help? Here, picture me in my Lycee uniform, you like that. Don’t you, _Papa_.”

“Don’t…” said Paul weakly, his arousal growing despite himself.

“I never had a father,” said Rimbaud, opening his unnatural eyes wide and grinding back against Paul’s cock. And oh God how he looked, with his arms trapped above his head and his cock still leaking onto his stomach, face flushed, lips bitten and red, saying these terrible things.

“I am not your fucking father,” said Paul. “You are not fucking your father, you filthy little...”

Rimbaud started to laugh then. “You like it when I call you that, I feel you get harder.”

Something about this humiliation, that he could laugh with Paul deep inside him, sent Paul wild. He slapped Rimbaud hard and even as he cried out, spat at him, he banged into him, deep hard fast, and then yes, and yes, he tightened, arched, and came.

Paul lost his grip on Rimbaud as he finished and Rimbaud shoved him away, kicking at him.

“Sadist,” he said. “Couldn’t get finished till you’d hit me, could you?”

Paul panted, starting at the violent red mark on Rimbaud’s face. God, what was wrong with him? Why could he never control himself, why did he drink why did he…

But the young demon stretched lazily and smiled at him. “You know I like it. But you are so cowardly I have to provoke you. A cowardly sadist.”

“I…”

“Oh don’t deny it. I am one too. Remember I can see into that ugly soul of yours.” He sought out his pipe again.

Perhaps he really was a demon, Paul thought fleetingly. Sent to test him.

“Here,” said Rimbaud. He turned to Paul with his pipe lit up. “Open.”

Paul lifted his face to Rimbaud’s and Rimbaud stroked his cheek then placed a hand under his chin. Gently he breathed a mouthful of hashish smoke into Paul’s mouth. Paul held his breath, letting the drug do its best work. Rimbaud kissed him sweetly on the mouth and Paul breathed out again.

“God I am ravenous. Are you not? I have some pies. Those English pies you know, the round ones with the meat jelly.” He looked around the wreckage of the room and eventually found a soggy little parcel which he brought over.

Paul’s stomach responded in the only way a true Parisian’s stomach could to English cuisine; with revulsion.

“How can you, Rimbe,” he said.

“Stop making such a fuss. Here, have a bite.”

Paul was hungry. The outside of the pie did not look so very bad, but he had been fooled by this before. He put his mouth to it tentatively.

Rimbaud pushed his face into it.

“You peasant,” said Paul, shaking with laughter.

“You are so fucking Parisian,” said Rimbaud, giggling. He did an impression of Paul fastidiously attempting to eat the pie. “Your face! You’d think I had offered you an arsehole on toast. And yet you gave Paris up for an arsehole in the first place.”

“You should not speak of yourself that way,” Paul said. “You are not so bad.”

“Oh shut up. I mean this,” he took Paul’s hand, pressed it where his cock had been so recently. “Not for your principles or your art, but for a hole. A hole to stuff your dick in. Is that not perfect?”

“It is a perfect hole,” Paul said, the hashish having reached his brain by way of his legs. “I should write a poem about it.”

Rimbaud shook with laughter some more. “Let’s, oh let’s. I will begin. Let me see yours, to inspire me.”

“Fuck off Rimbe, stop…” Rimbaud shoved him over but he fought back, elbow in the ribs, sharp tug of his hair. He managed to turn Rimbaud around and shove him down on the mattress, but Rimbaud was laughing too hard to fight back any longer.

“Mine is more beautiful anyway,” he said, slightly muffled.

Paul felt a jab of outrage at this.

“What is wrong with mine?”

He began laughing helplessly. That he could be jealous that Rimbe had a superior arsehole. My god.

“It has a disapproving look,” Rimbaud said. “Outraged at the world. And afterwards it cries.”

“Christ, shut up, I can’t breathe,” Paul said, wiping his eyes and releasing Rimbaud. Rimbaud wrapped his arms around Paul's neck.

“Let’s go to the pub,” he said. “I want to look at some English girls. Your little pupil must have paid you?”

Paul did not mention that he’d spend almost the lot on beer on the way home. Anyway, his sainted mother had sent more money only that morning, thank God.

He grabbed Rimbaud and kissed him deeply. “Yes, he did. And it is all for you, sweetheart. Come let me get you drunk, my dear,” he said. And Rimbaud smiled and kissed him back.

\-----

_It’s necessary to be absolutely modern._

Arthur Rimbaud

_Don’t go choosing your words, Without some confusion of vision_

Paul Verlaine

\-----

The next three days they wrote and wrote and wrote as they always did after such an explosion. They wrote in the park till they could bear the cold and damp no longer, in the library till they could not read for the fog that seeped in through every window. In their rooms where they would tear poetry itself to pieces and make it afresh in the shape of Rimbaud’s vision.

They tramped London together; the great parks of the south, the slums of the east, the Heath in the west. Breathing in ‘the air that choked Keats to death’ as Rimbaud would say. And all the while, talking.

Rimbaud’s mind was beyond description. To be with him, even for an hour, was to be in the centre of a violent storm. The ideas, the force with which they were expressed...Paul felt battered by the strength and strangeness of them. And just when there was a calm, when Paul felt he had at last grasped the rope of Rimbaud’s thought, then he was off, beyond reach, whipping out of Paul’s hands and back into the tempest again.

But if he could not reach his mind, he could reach his body. How easy it was to forget themselves, gin-soaked in the murk of an English winter? Paris was the city of love it was said, but it was not Paul and Rimbaud’s love. They needed the filth and grit and candour of London for theirs; the city’s ripped insides. Their poetry was written through the fogs of lust, drunkeness and London itself; dark desires on darker streets. Paul felt he would risk everything for it. Sometimes.

 

\----

_I see you, still. I opened the door._

_You lay in bed as if you were weary._

_But, O light body that my love bore,_

_You leapt up naked, crying and happy._

_Oh what kisses! What mad embraces!_

_I myself laughed through my tears._

_Surely those moments will leave their traces,_

_My saddest of all yet best it appears._

Paul Verlaine - Romances Sans Paroles _  
_

 

_And, almost every night, as soon as I was asleep, the poor brother would rise, with rotten mouth, and blinded eyes – such as he dreamed himself – and drag me across the room howling his dream of idiot sorrow!_

Arthur Rimbaud - Vagabonds

______

Paul should have known that trouble was brewing when he saw the expression on Rimbe’s face. He would get into a certain mood where nothing less than mayhem would satisfy him. Paul should have insisted they stayed at home, or at least only drank in the pub on the corner where no one cared what you did as long as you kept drinking.

But no, Rimbe insisted. They must go to the meeting and hear Vermersch speak. And Andreiu would be there; his great friend, and the man Paul suspected he had a secret passion for. Mon dieu how this boy tore his heart.

On the way they stopped into a pub, then another. Paul wanted a drink anyhow. He had received a letter at last from Mathilde, after months of having his returned unopened, and he was frightened to open it. Perhaps a good drink would help him decide. They swayed towards the meeting, Rimbaud loudly practicing his English as they navigated the market.

He stopped by a costermonger’s vegetable cart.

“How you say...I am an arsehole? This is correct?”

The man wiped his hands slowly on a rag and stared at them.

“I am an arsehole. He is an arsehole. We are arseholes,” Rimbaud continued.

“You’re a pair of arseholes alright,” he agreed. “If you’re not buying then bugger off.”

This delighted Rimbaud, as the rude English always did.

“I love it here Paul, my dear,” he said, taking Paul’s arm in a dangerously intimate way. But Paul could not bring himself to push him away in this moment of delight.

The meeting was packed to the rafters with every French refugee in London, so it seemed. Versmerch was to deliver a paper on Liberty, Slavery and Colonialism. The assembled crowd were passionate and drunk, Rimbaud more than most. He seemed to gain energy from the feeling in the room, and Paul watched him in trepidation. No doubt there were spies among them; the meeting was too large, there was no control. Rimbaud kept embracing Paul in a way just shy of damning, and Paul’s stomach tied itself in knots. He gulped at a bottle of gin and told himself it would be alright. The heat of the crowd steamed up the windows and he felt smothered and trapped.

It was not a surprise when they were raided.

Rimbaud, slippery as a rat, had Paul out and onto the roof before the Met had even blundered into the meeting room.

“Fucking pigs!” he screamed delightedly at the policemen guarding the exits below. “Enemies of liberty!”

“Shut up!” Paul yelled, in agonies of horror. Surely this was not the way they were going to be caught. Rimbaud grinned at him, his hands going to the flies of his trousers.

“No!” Paul yelled, tackling him.

“Let me go you stupid shit, I only mean to piss on them!” Rimbaud yelled in outrage. Paul pinned him down harder.

“Don’t you dare you idiotic child,” he said. “We must get away. Do you want to end back in Charleville, and I in prison?”

Rimbaud stopped fighting for a moment and Paul let him up.  And what the fuck were they doing, anyway, fighting on this rooftop like something from a music hall farce? The police at least had become distracted by Rimbaud’s favourite, Andrieu, singing communist songs at them and pelting them with pamphlets.

“Come on then,” he said.

Agile little shit that he was, he was down a drainpipe in a flash. Verlaine, drunk and uncoordinated, floundered in his wake.

They peered around the side of the building but their route was still blocked by two policeman holding a struggling figure.

“They have Andrieu,” Rimbaud hissed.

“So what do you care? Let’s go!” Paul hissed back.

“Let us just walk past, I want to make sure he is alright.”

“Very well, but don’t speak French. Follow my lead,” said Paul.

They walked sedately down the lane towards the men.

“Gor blimey, it is a fine evening for a walk on the old plates of meat,” Paul remarked loudly as they approached. He nudged Rimbaud to respond but his companion was helpless with giggles.

“ _Repondez tu_!” hissed Verlaine. But Rimbaud could not. The policemen however gave them no more than a quizzical look and let them go on their way. As they turned the corner, Rimbaud collapsed against Paul.

“Oh, _oh_ ...plates of _meat_ ,” he wheezed.

“Be quiet then, if you cannot take this seriously,” Paul snapped. Rimbaud only laughed more.

“Don’t be cross, it was too amusing. Wait…” he darted a look back around the corner. “They are thumping poor Andrieu now, those bastards! Fuck them!”

Before Paul could hold him back he had broken into a run. Pelting  up behind one of the policemen he flipped the helmet off his head. Ignoring the policeman’s cry of fury, he let out an enormous whoop of delight and sprinted off into the darkness, helmet dangling from one hand.

 _Oh my fucking God_.  All Paul could do in the face of it was sprint after him.

They ducked down a pitch dark alley, Paul’s lungs screaming.

“This way!” gasped Rimbaud, dragging him further into the stinking lane. Here they stopped for a minute, trying to drag enough air into their lungs to recover, despite the choking fog.

"You are impossible,” managed Paul at last. “You have probably made things worse for your friend, as if you care. Why do you treat people like this?"

“I didn’t treat anyone like anything!”

“Like everyone else is shit on your shoe.”

"What care I for that? I don't need any of them. Paul…” he said, sliding arms around Paul’s waist. “ I only need you."

"Oh, Rimbe."

Rimbaud released him, and they walked towards the gas-lit street ahead of them. But he would not let the subject go.

"And you only need me. Fuck everyone else. But only fuck me, of course."

“You want to fuck Andrieu,” Paul said nastily.

“So what if I do? Tell me not to.”

“I don’t want you to fuck him,” said Paul.

Rimbaud looked at him, eyes dark and full of provocation. “Tell me properly,” he said.

Paul felt hot all over.

“Or aren’t you sure? Perhaps you’d like to watch,” Rimbaud mocked.

 _Damn_ him. Paul shoved Rimbaud up against a wall, holding him there by the shoulders, and the boy let out a breath.

“You are not to fuck him. Do you understand me?” Fucking little... Always goading, stabbing at him. He pushed his knee between Rimbaud’s legs, parting them and Rimbaud gasped.

“Yes Paul,” he said, his voice rough with arousal. “I understand.”

“You are not to even think about fucking him,” Paul continued, enjoying Rimbaud’s excited squirming against him. “The only fucking you are to think about is my cock in your arse, or my cock in your mouth. That is all. _Comprends-tu_?”

“ _Je comprends_ ,” breathed Rimbaud, even as he arched against Paul, kissing him recklessly in the gas-lit street. “Only you. I love you.”

And Christ how could Paul resist him now, as RImbaud opened his mouth so sweetly under his own, cock hard as iron against him. It was all Paul could do not to have him right there, spread him open against the wall. And Rimbaud in that moment would let him.

“I’ll be good, I promise,” he said between kisses.

“God, Rimbe, I love you. I cannot get enough of you. Please say you are mine,” Paul gasped, his aggression melting away.

“Yes; oh yes,” Rimbaud murmured, holding him close.

A police whistle jolted them both out of their lusty delirium and Rimbaud took his hand instead. “Run!” he said and set off with a whoop.

 

\----

_Allow my head, that rings and echoes still_

_With your last kiss, to lie upon your breast,_

_Till it recover from the stormy thrill -_

_And let me sleep a little, since you rest._

Streets - Paul Verlaine

 

_Suddenly I saw myself, with him vanished, in the grip of vertigo, hurled into the most frightful darkness: death. I made him promise never to leave me. He gave it twenty times, that lover’s promise. It was as frivolous as my telling him: “I understand.”_

Une Saison en Enfer - Arthur Rimbaud

\----

Paul blinked in the grey morning light. He turned, dislodging Rimbaud’s arm from where it had been wrapped around his waist.

A policeman’s helmet lay at an angle on the floor by the bed, with what looked like piss in it.

Oh fuck, fuck, FUCK. The night before began to trickle back to Paul. His heart thundered with panic. The meeting, my god...Vermersch’s arrest; the mad exhilarating dash through the streets; Rimbaud assaulting that policeman - the helmet oh god and fuck to everything - then Rimbe kissing him under that gas light...was there a law they hadn’t broken? Political conspiracy, fleeing the scene of a crime, assault, theft, public drunkenness, homosexual deviancy and destruction of police property. They would be deported or hung or, or…

No. He would leave now and return to Mathilde. _Mathilde_. The unread letter. Perhaps at last she was willing to reconcile? He would fly to her at once. He must have been mad, bewitched to leave her. He scrabbled for his coat and found the letter crumpled in the torn lining of his pocket.

What he read sent him reeling. Divorce citing Rimbaud as the source of their estrangement. Talk of proof, evidence. How he must undergo a physical inspection from police. Paul doubled over, his insides turning liquid. He had been so careless. That letter to Mathilde, calling her a ‘bug that was waiting for finger and thumb and the chamber pot’, accusing her of breaking Rimbe’s heart. How could he have written it? She had received anonymous letters, she said, confirming his depravity. Who?

So he could not go to Paris. Brussels, then. He dressed rapidly, dragging a case from the corner of the room.

Rimbaud stirred but slumbered on.

Paul threw in which of his clothes he could find. He pulled on his most ancient suit - perhaps this would disguise him enough that he could buy passage before being detected. A pile of manuscripts. Letters. His stomach turned over to think that there might be papers or letters among Rimbaud’s possession which might condemn him. But Rimbe would not...surely.

There, he was packed. And now to take his leave. He glanced at the sleeping Rimbaud, his face so heartbreakingly innocent in repose. He paused, his heart clutching. Perhaps they could be friends again when this had all blown over. Surely he would forgive him for this abandonment. He loved him, he was doing what was best. He knelt down briefly, kissing him on the forehead and smoothing the dirty yellow hair back from his face.

Rimbaud’s eyes opened and his hand shot out and grabbed Paul by the shirt front.

“What are you _doing_?” he said.

“I…I’m going. I’m going away. Just for a short while,” Paul stammered.  Rimbaud sat bolt upright at once.

“No you fucking aren’t. What do you mean?” he saw the letter clutched in Paul’s hand and snatched it.

“From your wife? Oh she is so determined to come between us, that jealous bitch…”

“Give it back to me, it is…”

“She is going to divorce you at last,” said Rimbaud. “Aren’t you pleased?”

“She is going to divorce me and she is going to use you as the reason,” yelled Paul, his voice high with fear. “I will go to prison for it. For _you._ ”

“Oh!” Rimbaud’s face darkened with rage. “You think you have done this for _me_? Do you think you love me? Well, so you proclaim. _Imbécile!_ I see you in such detail,” Rimbaud said. “I am pulled to and from you a thousand times a day. Yesterday you dripped beer into your beard. Just one drop; but it stayed there, suspended in a strand of your disgusting beard and you didn’t even notice. You just carried on talking, talking about love and poetry with it hanging there, jiggling and... And I wanted to slap you, to slap it off your face and scream at you for being such a fool. And ten minutes later the sun shone through the window and lit up your eyes and you were beautiful again.”

“Rimbe…”

“No!” Rimbaud screamed. He got out of bed, shoving Paul violently over onto his back. “I am sick of this! You can be constant to nothing! Do you even have a spine?” He aimed a kick at Paul’s back.

Paul rolled over and got to his feet, grabbing one of the cooking knives.

“You try that again, I will…I’ll…”

“Do it then!” Rimbaud yelled, tearing at his undershirt, baring his chest.

“Stop it!” Paul screamed back. “Why cannot you understand? Selfish little fucking…I should stab you through the heart, if you had one.”

“If _I_ had one? What do you have in place of one, you pathetic drunk? An empty gin bottle?” Rimbaud started to laugh.

Enraged, Paul slashed at him with the knife. Quick as a flash, Rimbaud snatched one up too. They struggled, pulled hair, kicked. Rimbaud at last managed to graze him on the forearm and Paul roared with anger and dragged his knife across Rimbaud’s chest. It welled with blood at once and Rimbaud broke away from him with a scream.

Paul breathed out hard, leaning against the wall to stem the dizziness that had overcome him.

Rimbaud stalked towards him and put the knife to Paul’s throat. He was crying now.

“I hate you do you hear me? You were going to leave me all alone! What would I have done without you?”

“Fucked Andrieu?”

Rimbaud kicked him and Paul grabbed his wrist, twisting his arm up behind his back and forcing him to drop the knife.

“Let me go, let me _go_ ,” Rimbaud screamed, and Paul flung him away from him, clutching at his own throat.

“That is what I am trying to do!” Paul yelled. “I don’t want this any more! I…just fucking look at us!”

“You cannot go back to her,” Rimbaud said, scrubbing tears off his face with his fist like a child. “You belong with me. Look what you have written since we’ve been together.”

“She is my wife. I love her. I must mend things.”

“You drink and you beat her. That’s love? You abandoned her! You broke her heart, and mine. But what does she know of you that I do not know ten times over? What can she give you? She has her baby, but what do I have of you? You can hit me, I don’t mind. I hit you back. Don’t you see? Only we can understand each other.”

“We cannot live like this any more Rimbe,” Paul said, though he knew he didn’t mean it.

“You write such beautiful words now you’re with me. You can’t do that in Paris. You are crushed there,” he said, beginning to unfasten Paul’s waistcoat, button by worn button. One, two, three. He placed a kiss against the hinge of Paul’s jaw, and Paul felt a pulse begin to beat there.

He let out a breath as Rimbaud eased the waistcoat down his arms and dropped it on the floor. His body thrummed with the familiar beat of lust. And he gave into it, as he gave into everything.

Rimbaud continued to drop kisses wherever he could find a patch of bare skin and Paul felt dizzy from it. Now the rough fingers were working on his shirt; first the collar came off, was thrown aside. Another kiss, on the mouth now. Then the cotton shirt itself, slid up and over his head.

“You are only free with me. You know this, Paul. Think, think,” Rimbaud said, tears still staining his cheeks. He tipped a smeared bottle of gin against Paul’s lips, stroking his cheek as he swallowed.

“Think of your freedom lost,” Rimbaud went on, pressing a burning kiss to Paul’s lips. God the gin was rough. Poisoning him.

“ _All_ your freedoms, Paul. If you do not stay.”

A threat, of course. A word whispered in the right ear, a dramatic act. Suddenly Rimbaud is just an innocent boy, corrupted by a vile, godless Communard sodomite.

 _Demon_.

“Be brave,” Rimbaud said. “I know you’ll be brave. Stay with me.” He had his hands at Paul’s waist now, starting on the buttons of his flies.

Paul gave a helpless moan and pulled Rimbaud against him. Rimbaud pulled his own bloodstained shirt off and guided Paul’s hands to his crotch so Paul could feel the hardness there.

“See how I am with you,” he whispered, his breath fluttering against Paul’s ear. “I cannot resist you. Your ugly face, your ugly soul. You are meant for me.”

“Why are you always so cruel?” Paul managed, already so hard he felt lightheaded.

“You say you will go back to her! You break _my_ heart. Who is crueller? When I need you so. I need you…”

“You need…my money,” Paul breathed, but Rimbaud had taken the rest of his clothes off and he couldn’t think. “My reputation.”

Rimbaud ignored him, kissing him hungrily, his cock sliding against Paul’s, his hands digging into his waist.

“Now who is cruel, when you see how much I want you? How hard I am for you,” Rimbaud said. “ _S’il tu plait_ , Paul.”

Paul felt as though his blood was on fire with this boy in his arms, wanting him, kissing him, grinding against him with the little panting moans that he could never resist. Paul kissed him back desperately, pulling him down on top of him. Oh god, his warm skin and his vicious, sweet mouth, and the hard, wet cock against his stomach.

“Please,” Paul said, arching against him and Rimbaud knew what he begged for. He turned and grabbed the oil, pouring it onto his hand. Hitching one of Paul’s legs up, he thrust two fingers straight into Paul, and he felt like he was coming apart. He gave a low moan and pushed back against Rimbaud’s hand.

“You like that, don’t you,” Rimbaud said, leaning over and biting down painfully on Paul’s nipple. “This is how they will inspect you, if you go back to her.” He thrust his fingers in again. “They’ll spread you out on a cold hard table, those policemen. They’ll touch you everywhere.”

Paul took a shuddering breath, his cock hard against his stomach. The thought of that… the humiliation...

“Their fingers inside you. Stretching you. They’ll touch your cock and you’ll be so hard, won’t you Paul?”

“Shut up...”

“You’ll be so hard thinking about their uniforms and their shiny shoes and their pink scrubbed cheeks. And they’ll write notes down about you, about how filthy you are. How you flush pink and how your cock will get wet and how you pant for it. But they won’t fuck you. You’ll disgust them.”

Paul wondered at how Rimbaud could make something which felt so incredible into something so shameful. Rimbaud’s fingers were circling his hole, dipping in and out, teasing. He _ached_ for him. My god but he wanted a cock, Rimbe’s cock, _anything_ inside him.

“Rimbe, _please_ ,” Paul said, spreading his legs further, begging with his body.

“No one will fuck you like I do,” said Rimbaud. He ran an oiled hand along the length of himself. “Perhaps they will fuck you with their truncheons to see how you moan and take it. Do you think you could take it?”

“You’re bigger,” panted Paul. “I can take you. Oh Christ Rimbe, please _please_...”

Rimbaud pressed against him for a moment with the head of his cock, then shifted his weight forward and slid inside him to the hilt.

Fuck, _fuck_ , Rimbe was so big, and absolutely relentless. Paul cried out with pleasure as Rimbaud took him, savouring every inch and every second – for as forceful as his nature was, Rimbe was still only eighteen and went off like a pistol after a few moments. Paul loved his abandon.

Rimbaud tangled his hand in Paul’s hair, yanking his head back, making him cry out. He fucked him hard with fast powerful thrusts, hitching Paul’s leg higher over his shoulder. Paul felt the pressure build as Rimbe pressed against that spot, the perfect spot, and oh god, oh _fuck_ he was going to spill, he was going to finish so hard and not even a hand on himself, it was…

He came with a yell and Rimbaud pulled his hair harder. “God you’re so desperate,” he panted. But a moment later Rimbaud came himself, pushed to the edge by the grip of Paul around him. Paul revelled in watching his face as he did, so open and artless in its enjoyment.

He pulled out of Paul with a wet slap and rolled away from him. Paul lay there, breathing hard, watching as Rimbe stretched arms above his head, yawning, as though he'd done nothing more than take a stroll. 

“Now you must keep your promise Paul,” Rimbaud said earnestly, yawning again. He always seemed so contented after a great bloody fight like that, the irredeemable little arsehole. Paul kissed him and stood up. He knew Rimbaud would sleep for hours now.

He himself was hungry; ravenous in fact, after all that drama. He dressed quickly and rummaged on the desk for some coins.

He saw a new manuscript of Rimbe’s there and though Rimbe preferred to read his work out loud to him, he could not resist it. He sat on their only chair, lit a candle, and read.

He found himself still there, blinking himself back into reality an hour later. What he had read was strange and breathtakingly wonderful. So exciting that he felt almost scared by it. It was prose lit up by poetry, almost indescribable. It would take the world of poetry up by the roots.

“ _I wrote of silences, nights, I expressed the inexpressible. I defined vertigos._ ”

 _Look what we have made_ , Paul thought in a glow of ecstasy.

He read again a passage that had so thrilled him. A man spoke – obviously Paul - about Rimbe himself.

“ _His mysterious sensitivities seduced me. I forgot all my human tasks to follow him. What a life! The true life is absent. We are not in this world. I go where he goes, I have to. And often he’s angry with me,_ me, poor soul _. The Demon! – He’s a Demon you know_ , he’s not a man.”

 _I forgot all my human tasks_. Yes. It was all written now, the fighting the blood-letting, the love-making. Rimbe had experienced it, written it, and now he could let it go.

_“I’ll scream in the streets. I want to be mad with rage. Never show me gems, I’d crawl on the carpet and writhe. My treasure, I’d like to be stained all over with blood.”_

Yes, done. What they needed, the two of them were some human tasks. They should cook. Walk. Earn a living. No more screaming, no more blood. Just love, and poetry. He would stay.

Yes. he would stay. He would cook! An English pie? No. No. The Parisian in him revolted. Fish then. He would go to the market and buy them a fish, and fry it in oil like the English did.

He had been blind, stupid. They would be happy. He would make a plan.  They loved each other so much! Rimbe would be waiting for him when he came back with the fish and all would be well.

**Author's Note:**

> So we all know what happened with the fish, yes? If not, read [this article](http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/verlaine-and-rimbaud-poets-from-hell-6109698.html) that deep_dark_waters linked in their letter. Yeah. Well they weren't going to have a _happy_ ending, were they?
> 
> Because these two remind me quite a bit of Iggy Pop and David Bowie staggering around Berlin causing mayhem and writing brilliant music, I have put a tiny Bowie quote and an even tinier Iggy one in the fic. Just in case anyone spots them :)
> 
> I think I've identified most of the poems I quoted - there's a little bit of Blake's 'Tyger' in the beginning, because I thought Rimbaud would have read it at the British Library for sure.
> 
> "Tum capiti inscripsit caelesti haec nomina flamma - Tu vates eris" is a quote from a Latin composition Rimbaud wrote at school and won a prize for aged 15. I can't find the decent translation I had, but it roughly means 'the head of heaven traced these words upon my brow - YOU WILL BE A POET.' He really was a precocious little shit!


End file.
